Tachi's Guide to Paladin (post 1.22b)

[Tango]

Introduction:
Paladin is a tank through damage mitigation and healing. It has the lowest DPS ceiling of all classes but has the greatest access to damage mitigation skills and gear. Paladin does NOT have the highest enmity ceiling and its gear choices vary greatly based on the encounter and as such is a bit of a challenge to play at 100% efficiency. The rewards of being a top notch PLD main tank is huge. Your versatility in a pinch is much higher then WAR. With the proper gearing and a small amount of coordination on your WHM's part you can get almost the same levels of enmity as WAR. This guide will give you a breakdown of the details of the job and a good guide on equipment and why the perticular pieces are favorable.

Stats:
STR-sword dmg
MND-sword dmg, healing
DEX-block rate, accuracy
VIT-base HP, block amount, dmg reduction, base defense

Weapon: Curtana > Garuda's Gaze/Cobalt Winglet(/w enmity materia double meld+) > Mogblade*
OH: Holy Shield > Vintage Kite Shield+1(HP) ~ Thurmeons Purpose

Since a PLD has such low overall DPS a focus on enmity gain and block rate is made a priority, maining Garuda's Gaze through trash mobs and Cobalt Winglet with double/tripple enmity meld for boss's tends to work best. For stat comparison in shields every 5 points of 'block' a shield/gear has vs another shield/gear it reduces 1% of dmg. So if you have 2 shields 1 is block of 100 and the 2nd is block of 120, then when making a block the 120 is going to reduce that blocked dmg by an extra 4% on avg.

Gear depends on the encounter, stacking HP on Coincounter / Chimera helps a lot. For mistress or any fight where enmity is a major concern and its more of a burn fest its always Enmity > STR (till 350) > MND (till 310) > Cure potency > HP. For AV/CC/DH trash mobs a focus on VIT/DEX/Defense can turn you into a nearly invincible object reducing dmg per hit too the 30-80 range.

General Tanking Set:
Head: n/a > Militia Armet > Gallant Coronet ~ Cobalt Celata(MNDx2)
Body: Heavy Darklight Armor > Cobalt Cuirass(HP/VIT) ~ Gallant Surcoat
Waist: Cobalt Plate Belt (as much enmity materia as you can get) > Flame Sergeant's Sash > Veteran's Field Belt
Hands: Heavy Darklight Gauntlets > Militia Gauntlets > Cobalt Gauntlets(HP)
Legs: Heavy Darklight Flanchard > Militia Tights > Felt Trousers (STR+VIT)
Feet: n/a > Sentinel's Sabatons(HP) > Cobalt Sabatons(HP)
Earrings: Stonewall Earrings
Neck: Militia Choker > Explorer's Choker ~ Stonewall Choker
Wrists: Coral Armillae +1 > Raptorskin Wristbands +1
Rings: Electrum Ring +1 ~ Amber Ring +1 (depends if u are not at 100% accuracy use Electrum)

Enmity Priorty Cycle:
1. Provoke (750apx enmity)
2. Flash (400apx enmity)
3. Rampart (180enmity per member you hit who has enmity on the current enemy)
4. Sentinel (100enmity per ws apx, Only increases enmity generated from ws's does not affect abilities used)
5. Phalanx > Spirist Within* @ max HP (2.5x enmity: 300dmg spirits within equals 750 enmity total)
6. Fast Blade > Flat Blade (5.5x enmity: 100dmg => 550 enmity total)
7. Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Goring Blade

*Hallowed Ground (1140 enmity, best saved for the oh-shit moment but can be worked into enmity rotation if needed early)
**Holy Succor => if player in range (10 yalms or less) needs cure and you are not topped off you can gain avg 1k enmity from each cast. (1500 total healing @ 66% enmity rate on cure)
***Enmity lost => if turned and dinstanced, and 1-3 are down: Riot Blade > Rage of Halone
****Rotating Divine Veil and Sentinel gives you 40-50% dmg reduction for 66% of any fight.
*****Aegis Boon is best saved for insta-gib physical moves such as coincounter's 100T Swing, or for procing Phalanx for a Spirits Within combo on demand.

Cross Class Abilities: CON/MRD
1. Provoke
2. Sacred Prism
3. Stoneskin
4. Cure
5. Raise

[Tango]

Specific fight setups

Coincounter

prep: Gear for 4k+ HP with max enmity possible.

fight: Use specified enmity cycle at opening with divine veil right out the gate so that you can combo Spirits Within early. After initial volly of enmity you will always save Provoke for "Animal Instinct" (full hate reset). Focus on rotating sentinel and divine veil and save aegis boon for 100T Swing. You can ignore 100T Swing if you have divine veil up or sentinel up AND HP is over 3500. HP must stay above 3k at all costs, Glower does 2800 avg dmg. If HP is low and 100T swing => aegis boon. If sentinel and divine veil is not up aegis boon any 100T swings. If all 3 are on cooldown/not active then you have to run from 100T swings (this should rarely happen as you get familiar with his timing).

why PLD? The ability to stand still and strait tank through 100T swings safely makes it much more noob friendly. You still have to identify 100T swings and act accordingly but its much easier to just pop Aegis Boon in a pinch then worry about animation lock on WAR. WAR still affords you a higher early enmity burst cycle but with multiple anmial's a PLD has more tools to reclaim hate faster.

Missers Mistress

prep: Gear for max enmity > STR/MND with adaquate accuracy for 100%

fight: opening with Madening Potion then vollowing with typical hate cycle. Save Hallowed Ground if you can for adds for safety (2min. in to fight) but use early if anyone pulls hate. Coordinate with WHM so that they do NOT keep ppl topped off. Their is no instant gib in this fight so your ability to heal the mele is critical in holding enough hate. Instruct your WHM to only regen the mele until after 1:30min. marker into the fight. Coordinate a cure on you from the whm when you pop Divine Veil (double regen). Save Tempered Will for the 2min. marker when Mistress First moves, this removes your bind/heavy and gets you a headstart on moving into position on mistress's next pool. having sentinel ready for the 2nd pool is critical in giving your healer/blm time to move into the new position while you generally have hate on all the adds (from flash). Pop hallowed ground here if you have not yet.

why PLD? Being able to pop Tempered Will gives you a guaranteed ability to run quickly to the misstress's first pool at the 2min. marker. This is the one place in the fight that can get dangerous when tanking, if your stuck with gravity/bind and misstress is in position before you then its a high chance that it will breath the whole party. Being able to self heal if things get hectic and also grab hate on the adds while the BLM sleeps them is also very helpfull.

Hamlet

Since hamlet is so popular and PLD is imo the smarter choice tank wise for the simple factor that you have self heals and an O-SH** skill in hallowed ground I'll include a short writ-up here.
3 phases in hamlets-------
PHASE-1 (30min. ~ 21min.) claim named beastmen pop at very start and kill, pull beastmen from front to the back/middle archer lines. Your NPC archers should always be attacking something if mobs are alive. Keep riot blade on cooldown, although your DPS is not high you can still do a small part in speeding up kill times with defense down (its around 25% from all types so its nothing to ignore). Make sure MP is full near 21min marker.
PHASE-2 (21min ~ 10min apx) claim the 2nd named beastmen pop @20min. and have WHM/DPS kill it quickly and claim boss @19:50 as soon as you can start the kiting phase. Its completely possible to solo kite the entire time w/o any buffs/heals at all. Save voke for enmity reset and remember you have to be positioned between the cart NPC and the boss when you fire voke or it will first attack the NPC often taking dmg from archers in his path (you can purposely use this period / tactic if you need to recover some HP etc but dont' do it every time) boss must be last mob to die
PHASE-3 (10min. ~ boss death) when last beastmen dies get ready to claim zombie mage with WHM/DPS, if you can leave zombie alone and keep kiting great if your whm/dps are slow to grab it just toss a flash on it so it doesn't depop. When zombie is dead and DOL/DOH have done all 3 types at the same time AND a hate reset is ready to pop bring boss to archers. At 10% boss health have enmity reset ability poped (point bonus).
Skill rotation when kiting: if you take some dmg while voking between enmity resets this rotation can top you off, divine veil> aegis boon> holly succor

[HEADLINER]

I was looking for a good gear and meld guide. Didn't know that sentinel doesn't apply to flash/provoke

Great guide thanks for taking the time to make this!

[Tango]

since DL can replace many of your other slots as BiS I really suggest focusing on a triple melded enmity belt. Its not that bad cost wise to go 3>3>4 with 15>20>21~25 => 55-60+ enmity on your belt. This really is imo the single most cost effective long term upgrade you can make.

[Sigmakan]

Thoughts on tanking in the non-Heavy darklight gear? I'm giving it some thought due to the VIT (for damage mitigation during blocks) and STR for damage/enmity generation. Only downside is my HP will be a bit low and healing potency will be lower as well.

[Hoshikogi]

Nice starter's walkthrough; Although Id suggest a double dex melded Sentinal's Gauntlets and a Dex ring +1 instead of an electrum ring.

[HEADLINER]

For boots: What about explorer's boots which are very cheap and easy to get as a starter upgrade? They're at more hp vit and defense than sentinel's but of course no enmity+.

[Molly_Millions]

nice guide. I'm not convinced of the benefits of VIT over something else like HP. Basically, at level 50, damage mitigation from VIT is only worth .1% per stat point. So using tier IIIs as an example the question becomes, what is better, 1.5% damage mitigation or 50 more HP? I'd go with the latter, personally.

[Sigmakan]

nice guide. I'm not convinced of the benefits of VIT over something else like HP. Basically, at level 50, damage mitigation from VIT is only worth .1% per stat point. So using tier IIIs as an example the question becomes, what is better, 1.5% damage mitigation or 50 more HP? I'd go with the latter, personally.

Its surprisingly equal. 1.5% of 4700 (100T) is 70.5HP. But then again, HP does more for you for unblockable attacks . . .

[Tango]

If I was really going to main PLD in dungeons 100% I'd have 2-3 sets of gear even with my DL. I like doing a full VIT/def setup for trash mobs, taking almost zero dmg is really nice in AV/CC/strongholds. For general purpose tanking against say chimera I still have a hard time going away from the 4k HP build just too risky and not worth a few extra % block and a few extra % dmg.